This school year, we all kept on swimming
- Brett Hiner: A Work in Progress
- June 28, 2021
- 1344
Movies, and those we often quote, sometimes help make sense of the environments in which we find ourselves. Some quotes are cosmic (“May the force be with you”), some are threatening (“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”), some are comical (“There’s no crying in baseball”) and some, in the simplest of ways, provide life mantras (“Just keep swimming”).
For a student last year, in a particularly frustrating moment that was tied to a math assignment on our remote learning platform, I looked at the kiddo and uttered the best advice I could give him from my favorite line of “Forrest Gump”: “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks.” It is my go-to line when asked a question regarding subjects on which my skills are limited.
In the movie, this statement comes as Jenny is hurling rocks at her childhood home where she suffered years of abuse before being placed in her grandma’s house. Forrest is unaware of the past abuse, but as he does so wonderfully throughout the movie, he sums up moments — in this case, one of pain, anguish and frustration — in a perfect metaphor and in the most innocent of ways.
I would be lying if I said I did not think of this quote often throughout the past school year routinely when asked by an online student, “can you unlock my test?” — a question I hope I am never asked again. Or, how many times, both mentally and verbally, I screamed, “Inconceivable,” just as Vizzinni does in “The Princess Bride.”
The best way I can describe the past school year, from a professional standpoint, is that it was a bit like playing “Whack-A-Mole” … the minute you bonk one on the head and assume the issue is handled, three or four more “moles” make an appearance, and the cycle continues.
But, returning to the quote from Forrest, the thought of the throwing rocks always led me back to the notion of moving on from the frustrations, just as Jenny and Forrest do, holding hands, walking up the path to their home.
It was abundantly clear when we returned in the fall of 2020, that all of us, teachers and administrators, students and families, were heading into a much different educational world. I ran into a math colleague the day we returned and in his best Roy Scheider impersonation, he looked at me and delivered the line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” the line that has become synonymous when addressing what feels to be an insurmountable task.
In the fall, the task that lay before us felt a little bit like “Jaws” … knowing the threat was always there, ready to strike, but never stopping the collective effort from achieving the task at hand. And I do not just mean for teachers, but also for parents, students and families; all of the WCSD who weathered the storm, and paddled back to shore using those yellow barrels. Maybe this time, however, we should not hope for a sequel.
The collective sigh that floated over the City of Wooster last month was one of relief, having made it through the challenges together. “Patience, you must have,” Yoda tells us and, for the most part, although tried, patience remained intact. That is something we should never lose sight of because, let us be honest, if we had all gone the, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” route, we would have been in some serious trouble.
If you have followed the local news during the past several months, then you aware of the many changes headed toward Wooster City Schools this fall. I will soon be beginning my 25th year at the high school and I cannot recall, in that time, there ever being so much turnover and/or change. And that is not a criticism of those leaving, as no doubt change is inevitable, but more of a hope that wherever those who are departing Wooster land, they will be happy and productive, having survived the many obstacles placed before so many of us. In the end, maybe hoping is all we can really do.
That is why we should wish the same for those who are joining us; a hope that they will lead and/or teach with guidance, patience, and intelligence, with a calming presence and a listening ear. Hoping that things would get better got us through the 2020-21 school year, and a hope to return to some semblance of normalcy will carry us through the summer and into the fall.
Maybe equating prison life to school life is not the best comparison, but there may not be a better movie line than the following one, from “The Shawshank Redemption,” when venturing into our next school year: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”